Academy: Jelly on a plate
On the 8th March 2004 I went to see Lemon Jelly with Rich, here is my review that I hadn’t had chance to post up :
The Lemon Jelly gig last night was fantastic, much more mature than the last time I saw them 2 years ago. The support was a busker and a game of “hunt the stooge”. Unbeknown to us, two of the stooges were right in front of us, each with some Jelly mixed CD’s as prizes!!
The crowd seemed well up for it as they crammed in ready for the Jelly set. Lemon Jelly have moved on from their early material, and the gig certainly reflected their change of approach. As Mr Nick and Mr Fred dropped the blissful tunes for thumping basslines the crowd really got into it, this gig was more about the crowd. Mr Nick and Mr Fred were almost invisible on stage, as they gave way to a spectacular light and sound show backed by fantastic animations. The set seemed to flow from one track to another, giving a it a feeling like a DJ kind of thing, there was a real clubbing atmosphere within the crowd, which was lacking last time.
One of the highlights was a remix of “Rambling Man”, which is an old track that seemed to come under the new rules that the Jelly have moulded for themselves. The animation to this track showed all the place names within the track as road signs, which reminded me of “Royksopp’s night out”. Another highlight was the Patagonia track, which rocked. New and old tracks were crowd pleasers, “King Ramm” was so nice, I could have just floted away. Everyone joined in the first verse and chours of “Soft”, but it was nothing compared with “Ducks”. Everyone in the room seemed to be throwing their own kind of shape on to the collective jive! A few blokes near me who were dancing like crazy and were shouting “I love them ducks!, them ducks are cracking!”.
The new stuff is still settling down within the Jelly fanbase, but even so the likes of “Stay with you” got people digging a groove. The lights were spectacular as we were bathed in lights and the final track “Staunton Lick”, which was used for the ending of the Brit-com “Spaced”, gave a really nice end feeling to the gig.
Merchandise was extreamly expensive, but I bagged a Lemon Jelly keyring and a badge set, which was packaged in a CD jewl case and the text on the back told the beholder, to worship these badges as they were the first official collection of Lemon Jelly badges!
A few times I had to check my steri-strips were holding my stiches in but the gig was certainly the place to forget all the troubles for a couple of hours. The Jelly set within 90 minutes, leaving behind solid memories that can’t be shaken.
Unique on the British music landscape, thier next single as annouced at the gig is ” ‘95 AKA Make Things Right”, and the soundtracks to programmes on UKTV Style and in UK TV as a whole will bring back many memories of that gig.